The Hungarian Cookbook

Rating:
Summary: Hungarian Cooking for American Tastes
Review: "The Hungarian Cookbook" by Susan Derecskey is a real cookbook. If I wanted to learn how to cook Hungarian dishes (and I do), I would use this book. Everything about it is practical. This is no coffee table decoration filled with pictures of quaint cafes on the Duna, but something as useful as the Betty Crocker, and Better Homes and Garden cookbooks.

Derecskey starts the reader off with a quick explanation of the techniques and ingredients peculiar to a Hungarian meal. Equipment, she says, like pots and pans, are standard. None of the ingredients are unusual or hard to find. The Hungarians especially love to use bacon, bread crumbs, butter, caraway seeds, cooking fat, onions, sausage, sour cream and tomatoes. You already know about paprika.

There is a short introductory, but helpful chapter on wines, naming and describing ten major Hungarian wine types.

Each chapter presents the expected categories, like fish, poultry and pork. She gives us the Hungarian translation for each food type, and for each recipe as well.

The recipes themselves are nicely described. Since the book is void of pictures of prepared dishes (the only crucial drawback), she relies on a strong prose style. That is often missing from other international cookbooks filled with poetic takes on the romance of the local culture. Never self-indulgent, Derecskey is personal, comfortably providing her preferences for spicing quantity and serving styles.

This isn't a gourmet book. The recipes here produce the foods being made in modern Hungarian homes. The author refers frequently to relatives who gave her insight for some of the more difficult dishes. Clearly written for American tastes and cooking styles, it may disappoint some cooks. Those looking for a more authentic but slightly gourmet taste should look for Chef Gundel's cookbook, based on his famous restaurant menu.

She gives us enough cultural discussion to keep the book from being bland, while never losing focus for why we purchased the book -- to learn how to make specific Hungarian dishes.

Finally, right after the chapter, "Desserts and Cakes" (Édességek és Torták), there is a handy state-by-state shopping guide with 56 butchers, delicatessens and import stores.

I fully recommend "The Hungarian Cookbook."

Anthony Trendl

Rating:
Summary: Hungarian Cooking for American Tastes
Review: "The Hungarian Cookbook" by Susan Derecskey is a real cookbook. If I wanted to learn how to cook Hungarian dishes (and I do), I would use this book. Everything about it is practical. This is no coffee table decoration filled with pictures of quaint cafes on the Duna, but something as useful as the Betty Crocker, and Better Homes and Garden cookbooks.

Derecskey starts the reader off with a quick explanation of the techniques and ingredients peculiar to a Hungarian meal. Equipment, she says, like pots and pans, are standard. None of the ingredients are unusual or hard to find. The Hungarians especially love to use bacon, bread crumbs, butter, caraway seeds, cooking fat, onions, sausage, sour cream and tomatoes. You already know about paprika.

There is a short introductory, but helpful chapter on wines, naming and describing ten major Hungarian wine types.

Each chapter presents the expected categories, like fish, poultry and pork. She gives us the Hungarian translation for each food type, and for each recipe as well.

The recipes themselves are nicely described. Since the book is void of pictures of prepared dishes (the only crucial drawback), she relies on a strong prose style. That is often missing from other international cookbooks filled with poetic takes on the romance of the local culture. Never self-indulgent, Derecskey is personal, comfortably providing her preferences for spicing quantity and serving styles.

This isn't a gourmet book. The recipes here produce the foods being made in modern Hungarian homes. The author refers frequently to relatives who gave her insight for some of the more difficult dishes. Clearly written for American tastes and cooking styles, it may disappoint some cooks. Those looking for a more authentic but slightly gourmet taste should look for Chef Gundel's cookbook, based on his famous restaurant menu.

She gives us enough cultural discussion to keep the book from being bland, while never losing focus for why we purchased the book -- to learn how to make specific Hungarian dishes.

Finally, right after the chapter, "Desserts and Cakes" (Édességek és Torták), there is a handy state-by-state shopping guide with 56 butchers, delicatessens and import stores.

I fully recommend "The Hungarian Cookbook."

Anthony Trendl

Rating:
Summary: How-to Manual for the New Hungarian Cook
Review: Although my mother was a Hungarian national,she did not prepare many Hungarian dishes.Learning to cook Hungarian food has become a hobby that has helped me to connect with my own roots. However, as I seek to learn how to prepare Hungarian food, I do not have the luxery of having watched someone prepare it, and, in some cases, I am 'flying blind' with no idea how a given recipe is supposed to look or taste. This book has provided me with a helpful orientation, and enabled me to branch out with other Hungarian recipes. I have also found that once I prepared a favorite dish, that I was able to adapt the seasonings and spices to fit personal tastes. The Hunter's Pot Roast and Noodle pudding (complete with walnuts, raisons and apricot jam) have become family favorites.

Rating:
Summary: A good basic introduction to Hungarian cooking
Review: I grew up in a household where the cooking was almost exclusively Hungarian, and these recipes match closely to what my mother made. Whenever I have a yen to make something from my childhood, I consult all four of my Hungarian cookbooks, but inevitably, I end up using a recipe from this book. The only "americanization" that I can see is the use of butter or shortening in the place of lard, which is one of the staples of Hungarian cooking.

Although some reviewers have found these recipes to be bland, that has not been the case for me. I should point out, though, that one of the keys to good flavor is to use authentic Hungarian paprika, which is simply not available in most supermarkets -- not even in large urban areas. I'm lucky, I have relatives who send me some, but I can also recommend mail order from Penzeys.com. Paprika also comes in "sweet" or "hot" flavors. I prefer the "sweet" kind, but I have known Hungarians who think that's for wussies, and who prefer the "hot" kind. At any rate, true Hungarian paprika has an overwhelming fragrance, and a little goes a long way; if you put in too much of this stuff, the dish will have a bitter taste to it. (Looking at Mr. Lang's cookbook, a book that I find to be somewhat pretentious, I can see that the quantities of paprika that he recommends are for the bland, American kind of paprika.)

Rating:
Summary: A good basic introduction to Hungarian cooking
Review: I grew up in a household where the cooking was almost exclusively Hungarian, and these recipes match closely to what my mother made. Whenever I have a yen to make something from my childhood, I consult all four of my Hungarian cookbooks, but inevitably, I end up using a recipe from this book. The only "americanization" that I can see is the use of butter or shortening in the place of lard, which is one of the staples of Hungarian cooking.

Although some reviewers have found these recipes to be bland, that has not been the case for me. I should point out, though, that one of the keys to good flavor is to use authentic Hungarian paprika, which is simply not available in most supermarkets -- not even in large urban areas. I'm lucky, I have relatives who send me some, but I can also recommend mail order from Penzeys.com. Paprika also comes in "sweet" or "hot" flavors. I prefer the "sweet" kind, but I have known Hungarians who think that's for wussies, and who prefer the "hot" kind. At any rate, true Hungarian paprika has an overwhelming fragrance, and a little goes a long way; if you put in too much of this stuff, the dish will have a bitter taste to it. (Looking at Mr. Lang's cookbook, a book that I find to be somewhat pretentious, I can see that the quantities of paprika that he recommends are for the bland, American kind of paprika.)

Rating:
Summary: Bland and uninspired
Review: I have cooked several recipes from this cookbook and found them all to be rather bland. The cooking techniques, as well as the spicing, seems to be tailored for "American tastes" and this results in a less than satisfying result. This is yet another "ethnic" cookbook which patronizes its readers with assumptions about how we cook, what we like, and what ingredients we have access to in the market.

Rating:
Summary: Bland and uninspired
Review: I have cooked several recipes from this cookbook and found them all to be rather bland. The cooking techniques, as well as the spicing, seems to be tailored for "American tastes" and this results in a less than satisfying result. This is yet another "ethnic" cookbook which patronizes its readers with assumptions about how we cook, what we like, and what ingredients we have access to in the market.

Rating:
Summary: Good inroduction to hungarian cooking
Review: I have hungarian heritage, and needed a cookbok to serve finer dishes for our guests. I live in the USA and appreciated that all the measurements and temperature was translated to the american system. By now I have tried 10 different dishes and I am disapointed. Everything tastes the same. As my husband puts it: Your normal hungarian dishes has a firecracker of tastes in comparison to these recepies. So if you need inroduction, try it. If you would like to get the best of hungarian cooking this is just not good enough.

Rating:
Summary: The Hungarian Cookbook: The Pleasures of Hungarian Food and
Review: I have owned this book for a long time, and frankly while the style of writing is charming and folksy, the recipes, I thought, were bland and did not duplicate a true Hungarian flavor.

Which is too bad - I thoroughly recommend the George Lang book over this one. Although one might want to subsitute oil for some of the lard he cites for the basic cooking fat (which is what they use in Hungary), Lang's recipes taste like my Hungarian cousin's dishes.